On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:03:38 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

I need tomato cages for the garden. I have tried the wimpy wire
baskets at
the local farm store and they get bent up, fall over and are a waste
of
money. I did find some nice heavy duty ones in the local Amish
community
but they are $18.00 each!

I tried some hog panels one year but that was a mess too because you
could
not weed around them and it just did not work out.

So I have these hog panels and if I could bend them in a circle and
weld
them, they would be nice and sturdy but how to bend them. They are
tough.
Thinking about this, sitting in the shop last night, I spotted the
backhoe.....

The 4 in 1 bucket made a fine press brake! I welded them together and
now
have manly tomato cages.

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x...s/IMG_1095.jpg
http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x...s/IMG_1094.jpg
http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x...s/IMG_1093.jpg


Bob

Those make my 14 gauge wire fence cages (4ft tall) look
pretty wimpy

I would still pound in a good steel fence post and wire the
cage to it. Some guys put in two posts, but I haven't had
any problems yet using just one. Works good with the regular
(not the really wimpy) tomato cages too.

If I could afford that loader maybe I could pony up for some
hog panels too. They aren't exactly cheap if you get them
new...

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
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